Democracy

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
1

What is it good for? Quite a lot actually - but not everything. Tyler Cowen authored the pithy post below pointing out some of the virtues of Democracy (I’m including Republics under Democracy for the purposes of this). To his list I would add that 2-party Democracy like we have in the U.S. is very good at getting policies in the center - or, to put it another way, the policies cluster around the median of what the public wants at any given time. This is due to convergence - or, as Clinton called it, Triangulation.

Oh, and before I forget: Thanks Great Britain!

[i]John Edwards and the virtues and limits of democracy
Tyler Cowen

Mark Thoma writes ( Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Stimulus Gone Bad ): “I’m getting pretty tired of Democrats caving in on important issues rather than standing up and fighting for their core principles…” The lesson is that politicians’ core principle is reelection and pandering, not promoting the ideas of Mark Thoma or Paul Krugman or for that matter Milton Friedman or Tyler Cowen.

I find the (former) support for John Edwards to be one of the most striking features of the primary season. Although Edwards ran an explicitly progressive campaign, a great deal of his (meager) support came from Democrats in lower socioeconomic strata. They were voting their demographic, or perhaps their feelings of victimization, rather than their ideology. (Here is Chris Hayes on John Edwards ( Feingold on Edwards · Chris Hayes ), worth reading.) There is no large-scale progressive movement coalescing around stagnant median wages and the inequities of skill-based technical change. Instead we have Hillary Clinton insulting Barack Obama ( Dems the breaks - The Atlantic ), and maybe it is working.

The lesson is this: democracy is a very blunt instrument. Especially as it is found in the United States, democracy just isn’t that smart or that finely honed or that closely geared toward truth or “progressive” values. (NB: Democracy in smaller, better educated, ethnically homogeneous nations is, sometimes, another story.)

But unlike one of my esteemed colleagues, I believe that we should revere democracy as one of the modern world’s greatest achievements. We should step off a British Airways flight with a tear in our eye, in appreciation for all that country has done to promote democratic government (sorry, former colonies, but perhaps you are democratic today http://www.iall.org/iall2007/Gateway_of_India.jpeg ). This is no exaggeration or blog tease: I want to see you crying at Heathrow ( http://www.learnscience.net/Crying%20Girl.jpg ). The future is far more likely to have “too little democracy” than “too much democracy.” I do believe in checks and balances, but within a broadly democratic framework, such as we have in the United States.

That all said, we should not demand from democracy what democracy cannot provide. Democracy is pretty good at pushing scoundrels out of office, or checking them once they are in office. Democracy is also good at making sure enough interest groups are bought off so that social order may continue and that a broad if sometimes inane social consensus can be manufactured and maintained. We should expect all those things of democracy and indeed democracy can, for the most part, deliver them.

But democracy is very bad at fine-tuning the details of economic policy. Democracy is very bad at bringing about political solutions which are not congruent with the other sources of economic and social influence in a country. The solution is not to be less democratic, but rather to appreciate democracy for what it is good for. And the excesses of democracy should be fought with ideas, albeit with the realization that not everyone will be convinced. Those are the breaks, as democracy needs all the friends it can get.

Just as I love democracy, so do I love Chiles in Nogada ( http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000114chiles_en_nogada_chilies_in_walnut_sauce.php ). But I do not ask that Chiles in Nogada can solve most of the world’s problems or for that matter get me to work in the morning. Social democrats and progressives often view democracy as a potential instrument of control, and as a way of giving us “the best policies.” I do not, and that includes for my own economic views as well.

Here is Matt Yglesias on libertarianism and democracy ( Libertarians and Democracy - The Atlantic ). Here is a Hilton Root review ( http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=378&MId=17 ) of the new Michael Mandelbaum book praising democracy ( http://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Good-Name-Popular-Government/dp/1586485148/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201800248&sr=8-1 ).
[/i]

2

Democracy is great alongside a culture of personal responsibilty and family orientation. Otherwise, you end up with a people using government to raid another man’s wallet, while refusing to elect officials who will cut spending on bankrupt social programs.

I’m not saying there is anything better. But, I just think democracy can and will tear down a nation without a certain moral backbone.

3

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Democracy is great alongside a culture of personal responsibilty and family orientation. Otherwise, you end up with a people using government to raid another man’s wallet, while refusing to elect officials who will cut spending on bankrupt social programs.

I’m not saying there is anything better. But, I just think democracy can and will tear down a nation without a certain moral backbone. [/quote]

Exactly - Democracy is the absolute worst form of government, with the exception of everything else that’s every been attempted.

4

Small localized democracy with little federal involvement works best. Let families and communities have democracy and get rid of national government. That is the only way it can work.

The two party system is the absolute worst failure in the entire history of national government. It works to polarize popular opinion and stifle alternative view points. It makes the assumption that policy is always necessary which causes both parties to fight over how it will grow government and take freedom from local families and communities.

Democracy is good but not in government.

5

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Democracy is great alongside a culture of personal responsibilty and family orientation. Otherwise, you end up with a people using government to raid another man’s wallet, while refusing to elect officials who will cut spending on bankrupt social programs.

I’m not saying there is anything better. But, I just think democracy can and will tear down a nation without a certain moral backbone. [/quote]

This is absolutely right. A good quote by Franklin:

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

As virtue declines, so does republican government.

As for democracy, it is one of humankind’s great inventions - brilliant in both its efficiencies and its inefficiencies. Often overlooked is that the sputtering inefficiencies, logjams, compromises, grumpy disagreements, horse-trading, and general lack of precision are some of its greatest virtues as a system: it often keeps demagogues selling earthly utopias on the sidelines.

Since blueprints for earthly utopias based on the One True Way lead straight to the gallows, we like the system for putting a roadblock in its way, pitting people’s varied interests against one another. It is a conservative system in the most basic meaning of the word: it stymies zealous projects for overhaul based on ideology.

Democracy isn’t totally immune, far from it - the French Revolution taught us that - but, by and large, democracy is one of the great sentinels against totalitarianism, anarchism, and above all, radicalism. The “blunt instrument” nature of democracy can frustrate at times, but in the long run, a good thing.

6

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Sloth wrote:

Democracy is great alongside a culture of personal responsibilty and family orientation. Otherwise, you end up with a people using government to raid another man’s wallet, while refusing to elect officials who will cut spending on bankrupt social programs.

I’m not saying there is anything better. But, I just think democracy can and will tear down a nation without a certain moral backbone.

This is absolutely right. A good quote by Franklin:

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

As virtue declines, so does republican government.

As for democracy, it is one of humankind’s great inventions - brilliant in both its efficiencies and its inefficiencies. Often overlooked is that the sputtering inefficiencies, logjams, compromises, grumpy disagreements, horse-trading, and general lack of precision are some of its greatest virtues as a system: it often keeps demagogues selling earthly utopias on the sidelines.

Since blueprints for earthly utopias based on the One True Way lead straight to the gallows, we like the system for putting a roadblock in its way, pitting people’s varied interests against one another. It is a conservative system in the most basic meaning of the word: it stymies zealous projects for overhaul based on ideology.

Democracy isn’t totally immune, far from it - the French Revolution taught us that - but, by and large, democracy is one of the great sentinels against totalitarianism, anarchism, and above all, radicalism. The “blunt instrument” nature of democracy can frustrate at times, but in the long run, a good thing.[/quote]

A follow-on thought to those of sloth, bb, tb23. From Jean-Francois Revel, writing in 1983, a time in which the survival of Western democracy was in doubt:

[i]"[Democracies are hobbled by] guilt-producing accusations and intimidation that no other political system has had to tolerate…Democracy is by its very nature turned inward. Its vocation is the very patient and realistic improvement of life in a community.

“Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them. It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, evident. By then, either there is too little time for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high.”
[/i](published in English as How Democracies Perish)

(Revel perhaps considered the history of eastern Europe, but he could not foresee the fortitude of Reagan, Thatcher, John Paul II, and others)

sloth is justifiably concerned about “the forever war,” an undefined “war on terrorism,” and the loss of individual liberties, variously defined. I join him and others in that concern. I also worry that we loathe the painful and necessary, that we can preserve both personal liberty and our democratic society, else the cost become crushingly high.

7

That worries me. If moral national character is essential to the long term health of of democratic republic, don’t we have some serious problems?

Would anyone disagree that the family is the most vital institution for passing on these upright qualities (not going to get specific as to what qualities, for now)? I believe so, I’ll admit. And maybe I’ve romanticized history, but it seems that our grandfathers largely felt that way.

Presently, the institution has taken a beating. As if it doesn’t garner the respect it once did. I mean, the amount of children born out of wedlock, and negative statistics associated with such, come up from time to time. Not to mention some of the “replacement level” worries. However, in light of all this, when one pushes the idea of family, one is hit with “Omg, Christian right-wingers shall not push your morals on me!”

So, anyways what to do, if you agree with me that the traditional family is vital, but undervalued. Does government have some role in defining marriage? Or does government intervention harm marriage?

Sorry, if this appears off topic, but to me it underlies everything. Broken homes, crime, generational welfarism (which calls for higher taxes to fund), public health, educational issues, loss of a sense of civic responsibilities and duties, broken commonunities, etc., etc. Yeah, to me the family is the life-blood of the Republic.

8

[quote]Sloth wrote:
That worries me. If moral national character is essential to the long term health of of democratic republic, don’t we have some serious problems?

Would anyone disagree that the family is the most vital institution for passing on these upright qualities (not going to get specific as to what qualities, for now)? I believe so, I’ll admit. And maybe I’ve romanticized history, but it seems that our grandfathers largely felt that way.

Presently, the institution has taken a beating. As if it doesn’t garner the respect it once did. I mean, the amount of children born out of wedlock, and negative statistics associated with such, come up from time to time. Not to mention some of the “replacement level” worries. However, in light of all this, when one pushes the idea of family, one is hit with “Omg, Christian right-wingers shall not push your morals on me!”

So, anyways what to do, if you agree with me that the traditional family is vital, but undervalued. Does government have some role in defining marriage? Or does government intervention harm marriage?

Sorry, if this appears off topic, but to me it underlies everything. Broken homes, crime, generational welfarism (which calls for higher taxes to fund), public health, educational issues, loss of a sense of civic responsibilities and duties, broken commonunities, etc., etc. Yeah, to me the family is the life-blood of the Republic.[/quote]

The family is supremely important, yes. But the “traditional” family is not. Creating a “family” is not simply shoving two people of opposite sex and a couple of midgets into a small environment. A family is first a collection of individuals, second a single unit. Families create individuals, so that those individuals can coagulate and create new familes… that will in turn create new individuals.

Any unit that is a collection of individuals that produces new individuals, is, too me, a family. Fuck tradition. If parts of tradition help develop better individuals, I’m all for them, but don’t preach the power of the old ways unless you can prove they’re better. And remember, the old ways produced the individuals who created the new ways.

We cannot return to the divorceless, wife beating, child beating, farming, apprenticing days and families of old. It simply will not function in a modern society.

What we need is a dramatic change in culture and values, not towards older “traditional” values, but towards newer, fresher, and ultimately healthier values wherever they may come from. If this includes adopting the more effective values from times past, so be it, but an old, traditional moral on it’s on holds no value at all simply for being traditional.

Am I making any sense here, or am I just rambling?

9

TB23, Skep, what are these “threats” to demecracy you are talking about? Besides corruption, I can’t think of a single one.

And what is that nonsense about democracy being a conservative system? Have you not been paying attention to what happened in Venezuela, Lebanon or the Occupied Territories?

10

[quote]Sloth wrote:

That worries me. If moral national character is essential to the long term health of of democratic republic, don’t we have some serious problems?[/quote]

I am an optimist, but yes, I think we do.

No, I completely agree - and that is one of the bigger problems, as you state. Certain virtues and attitudes must be transmitted, and early on, we assumed that valuable, non-governmental institutions were in charge of doing that - family being the first. Self-reliance, sense of community, personal responsibility, work ethic - all of these should be coming out of family life (and other areas as well).

Precisely the problem - the new opinion (thank you, 1960s, but even further back than that) was that these miraculous, close to home institutions that have always inculcated things like “character”, “honor”, and “virtue” were oppressive mechanisms that held individuals back from being able to live any they wanted as they defined happiness. These were obstacles in the way to self-realization, underpinned by the sickening relativism that having to do something within a set of responsibilities was “unfair” to the individual (even children).

As such, these oppressive institutions needed to be torn down.

This is exactly the opposite of what the early republic had in mind. These “little platoons” were supposed to the backbone of a free people, not the roadblocks on the way to a libertine utopia.

It does - but mostly at the more local levels, although it is impossible for the federal government to be completely out of it (think taxes, for example).

I completely agree on all counts - all those important institutions have taken a beating indeed, and we should realize that every time we try and knock down these needed institutions, we are kicking the legs out from under ourselves.

11

[quote]Sloth wrote:
So, anyways what to do, if you agree with me that the traditional family is vital, but undervalued. Does government have some role in defining marriage? Or does government intervention harm marriage?[/quote]

No. I do not agree that the traditional family is vital. There is no such thing as a traditional family only the idea of what tradition should be in the minds of conservatives. Family is not only culturally defined but also defined by circumstance. Also, community is as much a part of our family as our uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters.

Each individual must make it a moral imperative to see the success of his family and community. I do not believe that moral imperative expands outside the community, however, therefore we cannot use the federal government to nanny and police other neighboring communities. We must take responsibility for ourselves and not attempt to spread our “goodness” with coercion. When we as individuals take responsibility for our own families and communities federal government becomes increasingly irrelevant.